Harrrington's - being the collected thoughts of the Hon Sec, by way of excuse and explanation.

 I like to think of myself as a man of the world.  I have seen many things as I served across the Queen-Empress’ Empire and good lord if one was easily upset by the hedonism one sees on The Mumbles, with their heathen gods and hot Welsh cakes one would be not fit for service.  Whatever two or three people get up to in the privacy of their own country estate is not my business but on reflection, if the could raise the number to four they could start a polo side. It was that in mind that I was pottering home through Maida Vale in the grey dawn following a rather good dinner given by the ‘Antediluvian Edifices Society’ when I saw young Derrick Latimer furtively letting himself out of one of those discreet little flats known in those parts.   I was about to adopt the air of unseeing ignorance one adopts when the Vicar’s ‘Specialist Lithographs’ arrive in the post by mistake when I noticed something something a little odd in his gait.   He was not setting forth wit...

The manner in which a chap is forced to earn a his daily crust forces some into many strange backwaters of life.   I, myself, one summer, was forced to become HM Military Attache on Canvey Island and as a result was present during the, now, famous defence of the Legation against a raid by Corsairs operating out of the Medway towns, forming quite and effective scratch militia out of the gardening staff and a party of businessmen from the Cotswolds who were there to investigate the possibilities of bilateral trade with the Thames Estuary.   It was with that in mind that I came across Whistley, sitting in his usual place a little to the left of the fire place in the Reading Room within easy reach of any biscuits that may have found their way in – he was a devil for Garibaldi's.   Whistley was as pleasant a fellow as you could meet but not one of life’s more adventurous souls.   Harsher critics than I had suggested he was too honest for a clergyman and too timid for ...